In Sidney, Australia a man with a guide dog was refused admittance
to a restaurant because the blind man had told the restaurant it
was a "guide dog" and the employee thought he had said it was a
"gay dog." The restaurant did not want to admit a gay dog. I mean
who knows what that would lead to. People are laughing about how
someone could possibly hear "guide dog" and have it sound to him
like "gay dog." Nobody seems to point out that while in print to
two words look very different, in Australia they would sound almost
alike. In Australia long'A's are really pronounced much like long
'I's. That is, the phrase "gay dog" would sound pretty much like
"guide dog" or even "guy dog." So the phrases "gay dog" and "guide
dog" would also sound very much alike.

I do pro bono mathematics tutoring at our local library. Kids who
do not know how to do their homework can come and ask me for
explanations. But problems in high school mathematics usually have
very cut and dried answers. That is one reason why people
volunteer to help students with mathematics. You do not find too
many people willing to tutor students in history, for example.
Also mathematics is arguably more fun to teach with than is
history. Somehow the machinery is impressive to show off.

Every once in a while I get asked for help on a problem that gives
me some trouble to solve. And every once in a while I catch the
teacher or the book making a mistake and I try to explain that to
the student. But the teacher is the one who gives them the grade
and most students would rather get the same answer as the teacher
even if some strange guy tells them that another answer is actually
the correct one.

But I never have had the experience before of being irritated at a
teacher or book just for asking a particular question. I was
recently asked about a problem that I felt was mis-educating the
students just to ask it. I am not sure if it was the teacher or
the textbook company that framed this question, but whichever it
was, they should have been stopped.

The chapter was on factoring monomials out of polynomials. For
example the student was supposed to see that 3x^2 - 9x could be
factored as 3x*(x-3). It was fairly simple stuff. Now the author
wanted to create a word problem that would require this same sort
of factoring. And this was the problem that was chosen:

The surface area of a sphere with radius r is 4*pi*r^2. If you
place a square of paper with side length 2r on a sphere of radius
r, how much of the surface of the sphere is left uncovered? As
soon as I saw the question my response was "they can't ask you
that." But of course they did. Nobody waits for my permission to
ask a particular question.

The answer they were expecting was simply 4*pi*r^2 - 4r^2 which
they would then factor into (pi - 1)*4r^2. But that is not the
correct answer, as I tried to explain to the student. You cannot
put an uncut piece of paper on a sphere and have its whole area
covering the sphere. The surface of the sphere is rounded. You
end up with pleats in edges of the paper. On those pleats the
paper is three thicknesses thick. Now you could trim off the pleat
and put it somewhere else on the surface of the sphere, but then
even those pieces would have to have pleats on the edges, and those
would have to be cut off and placed yet somewhere else. You would
end up with an infinite process of repeatedly transplanting pleats
and pasting them down only to get more pleats. And even that does
not work because any piece of paper of positive area cannot be
glued to the sphere without creating more pleats. In the end you
have to cut the paper to dust and use the dust to cover the sphere.
And even then is the dust uniformly as thick as the original sheet
of paper. Can you add up the total area of the dust particles cut
from the piece of paper and have it so uniformly thick that the
area is once again 4r^2? Well, in theory perhaps, but not in the
real world.

But even assuming that you could do all that, is that really the
answer to the problem? After doing all that the paper is no longer
a square. A square is, after all, a subset of a plane. It has to
be perfectly flat or it is no longer a square. I suppose
technically if you take square piece of paper and hold it in your
hand so it is not perfectly flat, it is no longer a square but a
piece of paper that potentially could be flattened to make a
square. That is really splitting hairs, but if you cannot split
hairs in a subject as precise as mathematics, where can you be
precise?

And here I saw the correct solution to the problem. A square must
lie in a plane. That plane can have at most one point of tangency
to the sphere. A true square of paper can cover only one point on
the surface of the sphere. And a point has area zero. Other
points on the sphere, even points very near the point of tangency,
are not really covered by the paper. The paper may hover above
them but these points lay under the paper naked and uncovered. So
the correct answer is that the surface area of the sphere left
uncovered is 4*pi*r^2.

CAPSULE: In THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, relatively standard mad scientist
horror film elements combine with a truly twisted premise. Dutch
filmmaker Tom Six writes and directs a horror film with a really
tasteless gross-out concept. The film has good production values,
but is still disturbing in ways that perhaps no film before it has
ever been. This is a film experience for a narrow select audience.
Rating: +0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10

Non-spoiler: As a mercy to the reader I do not reveal what a "human
centipede" is.

The Independent Film Channel has a penchant for finding strange and
unusual European and Canadian horror films. Last month I reviewed
their MUTANTS and shortly before that was PONTYPOOL. More recently
they are showing THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE which had previously played
only at horror film festivals.

Until the viewer finds what the title of this film means, this film
is made up of very standard elements, many of which can been seen
with minor variation in films from Ed Wood to ROCKY HORROR PICTURE
SHOW. Two American tourists, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and
Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), are visiting Germany and go off looking for
a nightclub that a waiter recommended. They don't know quite how
to find the place and end up with a flat tire and lost in dark
forest. They abandon their car only to get even more lost until
they happen upon a house. The house is owned by one Dr. Heiter
(Dieter Laser). Heiter is apparently internationally known as a
surgeon who specializes in studying and separating conjoined twins.
This image conceals the fact that he is a particularly nasty mad
scientist doing medical experiments that might have shamed the SS.
It is Heiter's plan use these visitors to make a "Human Centipede",
a particularly noxious concept out of a very vulgar joke.

Dieter Laser may not be familiar to most English-language film
fans. He was a continuing character in the TV series "Lexx", and
occasionally has small roles in English-language films. He
actually has a long filmography in German-language film and TV
going back to 1969. He makes a very satisfying villain having the
sort of face that lends itself well to horror films. He is
chilling giving a dry, impassive technical presentation to his
victims telling them what he plans to do to them. He is good and
he and a third victim, a Japanese tourist (Akihiro Kitamura),
really carry the film. Sadly the same cannot be said of Yennie and
Williams, who rarely do anything beyond the obvious or even give us
enough personality to tell them apart from each other or even to
care to. They are empty and interchangeable.

This film is a logical successor to film films like David
Cronenberg's SHIVERS and Frank Henenlotter's BASKET CASE films, but
oddly shows less and at the same time more of the anatomical horror
of those films. No rubber prosthetics seem to be needed for this
film but what is done is easily as disturbing.

Probably intentionally this film spills over into self-satire, but
Six does have the intelligence to play the film perfectly straight.
I suppose it could be called "tongue-in-cheek". THE HUMAN
CENTIPEDE will go down well with the right sort of audience in
spite of the fact that so much of the film is in familiar
territory. I rate it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10. The real
title of this film is THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE). If not
stopped Six intends to make THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (COMPLETE
SEQUENCE).

I've been hearing some nice things about Catherine Asaro's works,
and had even read THE QUANTUM ROSE back when it came out a decade
ago. Audible.com was running a promotion where you got the first
audiobook in a series for $4.99 or some such price, so I bought
SKYFALL.

SKYFALL is not the first book written in the Skolian Empire saga,
but it is the first chronologically. It introduces the universe,
some of the main characters going forward, and of course gives us
an introduction to the politics that are prevalent throughout the
series.

Roca Skolia is the daughter of the ruling couple of the Skolian
Empire. She's been on the run from her son, Kurj, who is trying to
influence the Skolian leadership that a war with the Traders is in
the best interest of the Skolian Empire. Roca disagrees. Kurj is
trying to prevent her from attending the Assembly so that he can
cast her votes in her place, voting for the war instead of against
it. Roca has successfully evaded Kurj, but now finds herself on
the backwater planet of Skyfall, which was at one time part of the
Ruby Empire--unknown to its backward inhabitants. The planet does
not have any technology--it is quite primitive. She falls in love
and marries a local leader, Eldrinson Valdoria. It wasn't supposed
to happen that way. When she landed on the planet, she was
scheduled to meet a supply ship that would take her back home to
vote at the Assembly. However, Eldrinson (Eldri for short)
captured (well, sort of) her and took her back to his castle, where
he wooed her and won her hand in marriage. That marriage is a
problem back home, since she is due to be married as part of an
arranged marriage.

And there are some other interesting issues. The Skolian Empire is
built on the power of psions, especially the Ruby psions--empathic
and telepathic members of the empire. It seems that Eldri is a
Ruby psion, and so the son that Roca and Eldri have will also be a
Ruby psion. When Roca finally gets home, the discovery of the
possibility that Eldri is a Ruby psion causes much consternation
with the ruling folks, especially Kurj.

The novel splits its time between two fronts--Roca and her time on
Skyfall with Eldri, and Kurj and his struggles with his feelings
about his mother, his history with his stepfather, and the fear
that he has sent his mother to her doom with his machinations
behind the vote at the Assembly. In fact, we spend a *lot* of time
finding out about the history of the Ruby and Skolian Empires, as
well as the history of Skyfall, Eldri, and his people. The majority
of the first half of the novel is spent on Skyfall and the goings
on there, including the history of the people, the relationshiop
between Eldri and Garland, and a rival leader that believes that he
is the rightful ruler of Eldri's people. The second half is spent
back in the Skolian Empire, investigating the history, politics,
and structure of the people who inhabit it.

SKYFALL does seem to be a nice introduction to the worlds and
people of the Skolian Empire--a really good starting point for
those who are new to Asaro's universe. The novel is, for the most
part well written (although I cringed a few times at the word/love
play between Roca and Eldri--it felt like high school romantic
dialogue all over again), the characters are well written and the
story is okay. My first gut level reaction is that its structure
will be like that of the Miles Vorkosigan universe--lots of novels
that don't tell a complete story together, but tell individual
stories within the structure of that universe. It's also a science
fiction romance, something I'm definitely not into on a regular
basis. I'd say that based on this book, I will read/listen to
another novel of the Skolian Empire.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the narrator, Suzanne
Weintraub. I won't say that I've listened to a huge number of
audiobooks, but I've listened to enough to know what I like and
don't like, and know what I think is or is not a good job.
Weintraub did a decent enough job, but each mispronunciation of a
word (and for goodness' sake I can't for the life of me right now
remember which word grated on my nerves, but I remember that she
would be inconsistent in pronouncing it) really got me irritated.
Especially irritating was her pronunciation of the word psion:
puh-sion. I know that psion and scion sound alike, but pronouncing
it the way she did was truly annoying.

My next review will be of BONESHAKER, the Hugo-nominated novel by
Cherie Priest. [-jak]

In March I have an opportunity to do some reading coming up, so I
head off to the county library to check the "New Books" shelf. A
few of the books on the shelf have little blue and white stickers
on the binding. Surely you've seen these stickers--blue
background, white lettering and a little "Jetsons" style spaceship:
SCIENCE FICTION. Is this some kind of consumer warning label?
"Don't read this book!" Who puts these stickers on the books?
What do they mean? How does the library decide which books get
these labels? The librarians didn't know. That struck me as a
little amusing.

Anyhow, I find three interesting-looking books on the new book
shelf: Dexter Palmer's THE DREAM OF PERPETUAL MOTION, Kim Stanley
Robinson's GALILEO'S DREAM and Andy McDermott's THE TOMB OF
HERCULES. But I find McDermott's book is a sequel to his THE HUNT
FOR ATLANTIS, so I get that book as well.

A little about the books:

Dexter Palmer holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Princeton
University. THE DREAM OF PERPETUAL MOTION is his first book. So,
how did his book win the blue-and-white sticker? The story seems
to take place somewhere between Oz and Charlie's Chocolate Factory.
The main characters are Harry ... and Prospero and Miranda. (Maybe
Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST also has the blue-and-white sticker?)
Along the way there are lots of interesting ideas, including
speculation about whether mechanical men will always be
distinguishable from humans, and if they will ever be able to
think: If a mechanical man said it couldn't think, is it thinking?
Very interesting stuff but the plot didn't grip me quite enough so
I gave up about half way through the book. Perhaps if I'd ever
read any Shakespeare I'd be more curious how it all turned out.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a well-known, award-winning author of
science fiction, so no surprise his book has the SCIENCE FICTION
sticker. This is the first of his I've read. GALILEO'S DREAM is,
in one part, a portrait of Galileo as fine as the portrayal of
Mozart in AMADEUS. It is a great historical novel. In parallel to
that story there is the story of Galileo's dream, which takes place
in the year 3020, and which might or might not be a dream, as
Galileo learns some profanity which didn't exist in his time. Why
Robinson is an award-winning author: "If I have seen less far than
others," Galileo complained in irritation to Aurora, "it is because
I was standing on the shoulders of dwarfs." [page 176] Mozart was
a genius who didn't have a happy ending; by the middle of
Robinson's book it seems Galileo's chances of a happy ending are
vanishing. One of the reviews on the book cover compliments the
book's conclusion, but I may never know as I gave up on this book
too. Lots of science fiction has disappointing endings and I fear I
won't like this one either, so I quit while I'm still enjoying the
book.

Neither Andy McDermott book has the SCIENCE FICTION sticker, in
spite of the books' titles and some very science-fiction-looking
cover art. Puzzling. Shortly after getting into the first book I
had this thought: if McDermott rewrote "Frankenstein", Igor would
be leading a small army of ex-Special Forces agents, and the
townspeople would have been armed not with torches and pitchforks
but with helicopters and short-range missiles. McDermott's books
are Indiana Jones meets James Bond, with brotherhoods older than
the Illuminati on both sides, and many allusions to other books and
movies. Every chapter of ATLANTIS--every new billion-dollar
"Frankenstein's castle"--is a new cliff-hanger. It's all in fun:
McDermott points out if the heroine, Dr. Nina Wilde, married the
hero, Eddie Chase; theirs would be the Wilde-Chase wedding. That
kind of writing keeps you turning the pages. But halfway through
ATLANTIS I started turning more than one page at a time. After
you learn what the new challenge is, the only question is: Who is
going to still be alive at the end of this chapter? McDermott
pokes fun at his own style by having one chapter start with a
character telling Eddie Chase to spare the locals when he blows up
this factory. Fun, but the second book was so much like the first
that I don't see any reason to read the third in the series (due
April 2010) or the fourth (later in 2010). [-tlr]

In a LoC, Sam Long asks about financial science fiction. The first
thing that springs to my mind is "Compounded Interest", by Mack
Reynolds. It's a story with some similarities to "John Jones'
Dollar", which Long cites: in the 15th century, a mysterious
personage makes a deposit in an Italian bank. Once every hundred
years thereafter, he returns to give the bank investment advice.
By the 19th century, the Fortune (as it's now called) has grown so
large that the line between *taking advantage* of a knowledge of
history, and *causing* that history to happen as it was known,
blurs to nonexistence. In the 20th century, the trustees of the
Fortune guess what's been going on and fund research into time
travel. It turns out that their researcher is indeed the Fortune's
owner...and that the time machine requires so much power to
operate, that running it to create the Fortune requires the Fortune
to be liquidated entirely, leaving the researcher with nothing to
show for it all.

Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth's novel GLADIATOR-AT-LAW also has
corporate dealing and stock market manipulations as an important
element.

Cordwainer Smith's NORSTRILIA has a computer programmed for various
kinds of warfare, including financial; its owner becomes wealthy
beyond the dreams of avarice. ("Buy the whole Earth" wealthy.)
This is more a device to get the action started than the focus of
the story, but it's certainly finance in SF.

In Lois McMaster Bujold's BROTHERS IN ARMS, the finances of the
Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet become important. At one point Miles
Vorkosigan asks their accountant if there's some way to work the
float of Earth's financial systems to create virtual money, and the
accountant explains why that wouldn't work. [-dg]

In response to Mark's review of THE GHOST WRITER in the 04/23/10
issue of the MT VOID ("With all the problems in Polanski's life
(perhaps not undeserved)"), Susan de Guardiola writes, "I find this
little aside very bizarre. 'Perhaps'? Do you not feel that the
problems of being a fugitive child rapist are deserved by virtue of
being, you know, a fugitive child rapist? Ethical people--even
talented ones--avoid having such problems by not raping children."
[-sdg]

Mark responds:

The word "perhaps" is shorthand for saying that there are people on
both sides of a complex issue--an issue that I have not studied.
Consider:

I am not one of those people who thinks that everybody has a
responsibility to take a stand on a question whether they
understand the issues involved or not. My understanding is that
there are a lot of people who share your opinion. You may be
right, but I have not fully studied the issue. My "perhaps" was
not taking a side. Sometimes a "perhaps" is just a "perhaps."
Please forgive one person who hesitates to immediately jump to your
side of the issue. [-mrl]

STRANGE MAPS: AN ATLAS OF CARTOGRAPHIC CURIOSITIES by Frank Jacobs
(ISBN-13 978-0-14-200525-5) seems like it would have a lot of
fantastical content. But unlike Alberto Manguel's DICTIONARY OF
IMAGINARY PLACES, Jacobs's book is based mostly in the real
world. True, there is a section titled "Literary Creations" which
includes maps of Utopia, the island from MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, Oz, and
so on. "Fantastic Maps" includes "Tolkien's Australia" as well as
"If Land Was Sea and Sea Was Land". And "Watchamacallit" has
"Europe, If the Nazis Had Won: Neuropa" (where Jacobs says of
alternate history that it is "either a maligned branch of history
or an obscure branch of science fiction").

But most of the book consists of maps of the real world. These are
not always accurate maps, as one section heading might indicate:
"Cartographic Misconceptions". Often they are not even intended to
be accurate ("Artography", "Zoomorphic Maps", "(Political) Parody",
"Maps as Propaganda", "Linguistic Cartography"), or are accurate in
different ways ("Cartograms and Other Data Maps", "A Matter of
Perspective", "Maps from Outer Space").

Some are historical ("Obscure Proposals", "Ephemeral States").
Others look at some of the peculiarities of geopolitics ("Strange
Borders", "Enclaves and Exclaves"). Then there is "Iconic
Manhattan", which is overlapped somewhat by one of the maps in
"Linguistic Cartography" and does not include what one might
consider the classic "Manhattan" map: Saul Steinberg's "New Yorker"
map of the world. If one wants to argue that that includes more
than Manhattan, it still seems as though it belongs somewhere in
this book, or at least one of its many offspring. After all, there
is an entire section, "Based on the Underground", devoted to the
descendents of Harry Beck's 1933 London Underground Map. (On the
other hand, I suspect that the rights to Steinberg's original are
expensive, and to the offspring legally suspect.)

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Do not read the rest of this article unless you have already read
Miéville's THE CITY & THE CITY.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

The one section I found that had unexpected fantastical content was
"Enclaves and Exclaves", and in particular "Enclaves,
Counterenclaves and a Dead Body: The Borders of Baarle". If you've
read China Miéville's THE CITY & THE CITY, you'll understand why.
One wonders, in fact, if Miéville was aware of Baarle before he
wrote the book.

Baarle consists of two "administrative units": the Dutch Baarle-
Nassau and the Belgian Baarle-Hertog. These occupy 5732 parcels of
land which are completely surrounded by the Netherlands, but are
allocated to either Belgium or the Netherlands. Baarle is
described as having 22 Belgian enclaves in the Netherlands and 5
Dutch ones in Belgium.

One result of this is that, because taxes on a building are paid to
the country in which the front door is located, front doors are
sometimes moved to gain tax benefits. Because of differing closing
times, people in bars can get drinks longer by moving their tables
across the room. And so on.

But there are even more striking similarities to Beszel and Ul
Qoma:

- "To make the enclaves visible for the visitor, the little plates
with the house numbers are made to look different: ovals with the
Belgian colours and rectangles with Dutch colours."

- "Officially a letter goes by post from Hertog over Turnhout to
Brussels and then by air to Amsterdam, and for the last part of the
journey over Tilburg to Nassau."

- "Police detectives from the two countries [trying to solve a 2008
murder in Baarle] each had to look for clues in their own half;
they feared that if they literally overstepped their boundaries,
any case they might have against a suspect could later be thrown
out on a technicality."

I know--you think I'm making the last one up. But I'm not. The
body of a non-resident of Baarle was found in a building that had
parts in both administrative units, which made it even more
confusing. [-ecl]

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quote of the Week:
It is a curious thing ... that every creed
promises a paradise which will be absolutely
uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
-- Evelyn Waugh